Environmentally Caused Cancers Grossly Underestimated,’ U.S. Panel Says

Saying “the true burden of environmentally induced cancers gas been grossly underestimated,” a White House cancer panel has urged President Obama “to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.” The 240-page report by the President’s Cancer Panel, appointed by former President George W. Bush, is the first to focus on the environmental causes of cancer, which it says are ubiquitous. The panel cited threats ranging from such substances as bisphenol A — widely used in plastic bottles and can linings — to benzene in vehicle exhaust. The two-member panel, which consists of a leading cancer surgeon from Howard University and a cancer expert from the University of Texas’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center — recommended raising consumer awareness of cancer risks posed by chemicals in food, air, water, and consumer products; increasing research into environmentally caused cancers; tightening regulation of chemicals that may cause cancers; and reducing the roughly 70 million CT scans performed each year in the United States. The report said previous estimates that environmental pollutants and occupational exposures cause 6 percent of all cancers are low and “woefully out of date.”